


Love-dusted!

by Beezlebub



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/M, Love-dusted Marianne, Singing, lost tempers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21757060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beezlebub/pseuds/Beezlebub
Summary: When the goblins raid the Elf Festival, Dawn isn’t the one who gets accidentally love-dusted. What can be done to stop a strong, fierce, desperately-in-love-(which-she-hates)-with-this-goblin-she-just-met Marianne? How is Bog going to get out of this alarming situation, especially when he feels himself falling for a fairy princess who obviously doesn’t actually love him and is just suffering the effects of a love potion?
Relationships: Bog King/Marianne (Strange Magic)
Comments: 37
Kudos: 181





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I just wonder. When Dawn gets hit with the potion, she’s all lovey songs and cutesy nicknames. Marianne mimics that when Roland love-dusts her at the end of the movie, but… she’s not Dawn. When the dust really comes down, what kind of out-of-her-mind displays does she go for? And isn’t there a part of her that fights it?
> 
> This is a musical fic. For authenticity. It’s got a few songs. I’ll list them at starts of chapters in case you want to look them up… ^.^
> 
> Heart - “Alone”  
> Finally, rating is subject to change and the length of the final story is... unpredictable. 
> 
> Forgive me.

Infiltrating the party was a simple matter. Fairies being fairies, all of the posted guards were looking inward toward the light and the noise and none of them noticed the dragonflies zip overhead. It was only when the raid was truly underway, after that venomous little fairy - despite being restrained by two bigger goblins - had somehow managed to clock Bog hard enough to make him taste stars for a second, only after that did the situation start to slip out of his control.

He raised his staff overhead with the kind of snarl that always sent goblins scurrying, but she just sneered back up at him, daring him to crack her skull open right here. He was about to do it - or at least knock some of the fight out of her - but then a puff of glittering pink dust wafted past Bog and struck her in the face.

“No!” shouted some guy in the crowd.

He whirled to see an elf and an imp frozen mid-wrestling match just behind him, both of them gripping an open bottle. The elf was staring at the fairy he had just dosed, panicked realization written large on his face. The imp recovered first and snatched the bottle away.

“Stop that imp,” Bog roared. A few goblins dashed off in pursuit. 

Much closer, the elf made a piteous sound. He didn’t seem to notice that the imp and the potion were both gone - instead, he was staring past Bog’s legs with a look of growing horror. Bog followed his stare and found that fire-spitting fairy blinking groggily up at him as the dust vanished into her cheeks.

He set his teeth and braced himself for the scream. That was how the potion had “worked” the only other time he encountered it - as soon as that lovely creature’s eyes had cleared and fixed upon his face…

But that wasn’t what happened to the fairy. Her dark-painted eyes swept over him, refocused on his face, and grew sharply intense. She didn’t smile. She gnashed her teeth together, and a sound came out of her. A muffled, slurred, strangled sound. 

Her entire body was rigid as a drawn bow - and then, suddenly, she hunched forward and went limp. The goblins holding her eased up minutely, adjusting to her unresisting weight. From her hanging head, the sound went on, clearer now. It was… a song. 

“ _The night goes by so… very slow- Oh, I hope that it won’t end though… alone…”_

She slammed her legs wide and blasted a power pose as the beat hit, flinging the two goblins off of her and spreading her wings in an enormous display. Bog fell back a startled step, but she didn’t pounce. She just belted out the song at the top of her lungs.

“’ _Til now, I always got by on my own! I never really cared until I met you!_ ” She pointed at Bog, her slimly muscled arm so unerringly straight. Her eyes gleamed, feverish. _“And now it chills me to the bone! How do I get you alone?_ ”

“What?” Bog heard his nonplussed reaction echoed - much more loudly - by the Fairy King, but he hardly registered that. 

What kind of game was the Sugar Plum Fairy playing at? Had she changed the potion somehow? Made it stronger? What other explanation could there be for… this?

In a flash, the fairy was leaning very close to him, her wings quivering, her face lowered so she seemed almost to be glaring up at him. Her dark lips peeled back from a not-quite pout to something much more hostile.

_“You don’t know how long I have wanted,_ ” she sang through her teeth, “ _to touch your lips and hold you tight._ ”

She began walking her fingers up his chest and Bog blinked dumbly down at her hand before his eyebrows leapt up his hot face. He jerked away and turned a snarl on his goblins, who milled nearby.

“What are you doing, you idiots? Restrain her!”

They hustled to obey, but the fairy fought back, kicking one in the gut, punching the other in the face, singing the whole time.

“- _and I was gonna tell you tonight-_ Rah! _But the secret, is still my own -_ unph - _and my love for you is still unknown…_ ”

“Bog King! What is the meaning of this?” The Fairy King was struggling against his own goblin guard, but he seemed a lot less concerned with them than he had before. “What have you done to my daughter?”

“ _I_ did nothing,” Bog snapped, still a little breathless. “It’s a love potion - and one of _your_ subjects invaded my land to obtain it.” 

The Fairy King paled and stilled. “A love potion?”

“Wait,” Bog stiffened as the king’s words fully caught up to him. He glowered incredulously, pointing at the wild fairy still belting out her song and doing her best to find a place to elbow her captors that might actually hurt them. “That. _That_ is a princess.”

“Right?” smirked a blonde fairy in flashing armor. He had appeared seemingly out of nowhere - had he been hiding behind those leaves during the fight? - and approached the stage with an affable, suave confidence that made Bog’s back scales grind together instantly. “Listen everybody,” he said with a breathy hint of accent, “let’s all just calm down here. Clearly, this is… just a big misunderstanding.”

“There’s no misunderstanding.” Bog whirled his staff around to point at the cowering elf. “You. You’re the thief. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

The elf was still staring at the love-dusted princess, fear and regret evident on his face. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to use the potion on Marianne. I just thought… Roland said-”

“-that it was a terrible idea, Sunny, and you shouldn’t go _inviting_ more _trouble_ ,” the blonde fairy insisted quickly. The elf flinched. Roland shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “You gotta understand, the little guy was desperate. And so, _so_ out of his league.”

He pointed none-too-subtly at the bagged-up fairy. The one that actually looked like a princess. The one they had planned to kidnap instead of the spitfire Bog could now hear raggedly starting her song over behind him. He scrunched up his shoulders and dragged his claws through his head scales. 

_Fairies and their fairy dramas_.

“What…” The elf, Sunny, glanced up at him anxiously. “What’s wrong with her? She sounds like she’s…”

“In pain?” Bog asked, leaning down to put his face close to the elf’s. “Love _is_ pain.”

The elf shied away but, to his credit, his expression firmed and he turned back. “There has to be a cure. Please, let me talk to the Sugar Plum Fairy. Let me fix this.”

Bog straightened up, frowning because he wasn’t sure there _was_ a cure. The elf wasn’t the only one watching him expectantly, though. The Fairy King had an especially anxious look in his wide eyes. That insufferable blonde fairy waited with suspiciously bright attention.

“She’s not _just_ a princess, though, is she.” It wasn’t quite a question, but it came out of Bog with a wash of realization. “She’s your eldest. She’s to be queen… And what a fix you’d all be in… if she was to fall in love with the king of the Dark Forest.”

The watching faces paled. Elves and brownies and fairies all shrank before him, finally truly cowed by the seriousness of the situation.

“You think you can invade my land and steal from me and I’ll just _let it go_? You think I’ll cure your lovesick princess and just traipse myself home empty-handed?” 

Bog lifted up off the stage, the furious vibration of his wings hardly touching the well of his fury. The only clear thought in his head was how they had _asked_ for this, they deserved to face the consequences. It would serve the lot of them right for ignoring his warnings, his laws, his very sovereignty. 

“Return my potion before moondown or I will _marry her_ ,” he snarled through his jagged teeth, “and you will _all_ pay for this insult to your new _king._ ”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, and all the kudos and reviews!
> 
> Bonnie Tyler - “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

Marianne was _burning_.

She gazed up at the hovering figure of the goblin leader, and her mouth flooded strangely with saliva. She gulped, her stomach churning with want and need and nausea all at once. She felt completely out of control in a way she had never felt before. She was a whirling tangle of emotions, as impossible to separate out as strands of summer-thick bindweed.

Looking up at that tall stranger, she _hated_ him, and she _wanted_ him. She didn’t even know his name, but she loved him with a dizzying intensity that was so much more immediate and bodily than what she had felt for Roland.

And she loathed this feeling, this loss of control, the fog that had settled in around her brain. She should be fighting. A stern, determined part of her was still asserting that. She had to fight this feeling, and she had to fight _him_ …

But at the same time, everything in her mind and body was screaming that these feelings were so right. This was fate. This was destiny. Hadn’t she always wanted to forge peace between the Light Fields and the Dark Forest? Wasn’t a marriage the strongest start to a new alliance?

And wasn’t he so delicious to look at?

His legs were long and grasshopper-strong, and the strange plates of his body fitted together into a compact trunk and deep chest and big, impressive shoulders. His wings were waspish and torn. He looked battle-scarred and tough, but she had felt the slight give of some of the scales on his chest, more leather than shell-hard. It had her heart leaping up in her throat, the memory of that contact, the thought of touching him again.

He was saying something, something about a potion, something about paying - and -

“-or I will _marry her_ -!”

Marianne fluttered - both her wings, what little they were able to move now with so many goblins holding her down, and her stomach. She could imagine herself marrying him. Easily. He was… he was so strong, so different. Exciting, dangerous, all the things she liked. He even had an army already, so it was unlikely he would be marrying her for-

The stern part of Marianne, the part that was made wholly of bitterness and betrayed rage, reared back its head and screamed. Something was wrong here. She had to _fight!_

There was no way she could pull free again. She could hardly breathe, there were so many goblins on her now.

But she could breathe, so she drew in a huge breath. What came out of her, she hardly even knew, but it felt so _right._ Her voice exploded into the silence following whatever he had said.

“ _Turn around, Bright Eyes!_ ”

He did turn. He turned and stared down at her as she went on, and the low lights on the stage illuminated his shocked face. His eyes were a vibrant, sumptuous blue. For a second, she had him, she could see a hint of pink surface in his pale cheeks, and her heart was soaring through her, beyond her, up to him.

He hesitated, staring back at her, then he curled his lip to bare his crooked teeth.

“You can keep your princess for the time being,” he said, turning to address someone else, someone who wasn’t her. “I won’t have her caterwauling in my castle, and the other one’s already bagged up and ready to go. Besides,” he sneered, “it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the ceremony.”

Distantly, Marianne knew it was her father who cried out in horror. She knew Roland’s disgusted undertone was in the murmurs from the crowd, that Dawn was making distressed noises in her bag. None of that fully registered, though.

“Bad luck,” she uttered between verses. A terrible dread was welling up in her, like drinking too much cold water at once. She was in love again - and it was going to fall apart again. It was going to hurt again. She had to try harder.

“ _Every now and then I know you’ll never be the boy you always wanted to be - Turn around!_ ”

This time, he didn’t turn around. He didn’t look at her. He fixed his glower elsewhere and pretended not to hear her crying out for him.

“ _Every now and then I know you’ll always be the only boy who wanted me the way that I am!”_

“Moondown, Dagda. Or I’ll be back to collect the other one before the dawn.”

The whir of dragonflies threatened to drown out other sounds, so Marianne had to sing louder, but the goblins began to leave anyway - starting with the leader. He soared straight up into the night sky, and Marianne sang hard after him, so hard her voice cracked.

“ _But I need you now tonight! And I need you more than ever! And if you only hold me tight, we’ll be holding on forever!_ ”

If he heard her, he gave no sign of it - and it tore her heart out.

Marianne wasn’t entirely aware of the goblins who had been holding her back as they withdrew, and she wasn’t really aware that the clawed hands that had grasped her were rapidly replaced with gauntlets. She fought when she sensed a weakness, but didn’t manage to break free.

Suddenly, her father was standing before her, clutching her tear-streaked face and peering anxiously into her eyes.

“Marianne. He’s gone, Marianne. Can you stop singing? Can you- Listen to me, Marianne…”

She didn’t really hear him. The thing that finally cut through to her - the only thing that made her tear her burning eyes off the empty sky where the goblin raiding party had disappeared - was when Sunny finally shouted.

“Snap out of it, Marianne! They took Dawn!”

Dawn? The goblins kidnapped Dawn? Dawn, who was so incautious and so soft and so vulnerable? _He_ took Dawn? That didn’t sound like a guy she would love. There had to be some mistake… only, she’d seen him do it. In the haze of her potion-addled brain, Marianne couldn’t quite seem to entertain both of those realities - both her love and his actions were incontrovertible.

She blinked hard and shook her head to clear the lingering cobwebs - which only succeeded in planting a faint ache in her temple. There were two soldiers holding her with firm grips on her shoulders and upper arms, and Sunny stood before her, a tortured look on his face. Beyond him, Marianne could see Roland speaking to her father at maximum wind-bag - something about how he would save the princess, something about an army. Her father nodded along, capitulating as ever.

“I’m so, so sorry, Marianne,” Sunny said quietly.

Marianne wasn’t sure exactly why he was sorry. She had a vague understanding that he had done something, something dangerous that had put Dawn at risk. He had done whatever it was that brought the goblins here. …He was the reason Dawn got kidnapped.

“What were you _thinking?_ ” she hissed.

“I don’t know,” he said, cringing and clearly ashamed. “I didn’t think it would work like this! I thought it would just… help her see me.”

“Listen, Sunny.” Marianne slanted another glance at her dad and Roland, then scowled. “I have to save my sister. I’m the only one who can do this.”

Sunny’s eyes flicked sideways to the guards, who were pretty obviously hearing everything they said. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Marianne. You’re not… totally yourself right now.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“No! Maybe! I don’t know - you’re giving off a lot of… _vibes_ \- I just really get the feeling that if you go after Dawn, you’re gonna get in-“ He scrunched up his face, unable to meet her eyes. “-really big… spiky, _weird_ trouble.”

It took a lot of effort to stop baring her teeth at him. “I am the trouble, Sunny. If you can’t help, just stay out of the way.”

She flicked her eyes to the side, to where her sword was still stabbed into the stage nearby. Sunny followed the look. For a second, he seemed unsure, like he might warn the guards she was about to try something. Then he hung his head and sighed and stumped off to wiggle the blade loose.

Marianne stomped one guard’s foot, kicked the other in the knee, threw open her wings, and ran. She snatched the sword from Sunny’s loose hold and, with huge beats of her wings, launched into the night sky.

She heard her father calling after her, heard the half-hearted pursuit of guards weighed down by their armor, but Marianne’s attention was entirely on the Dark Forest looming ahead of her, her heart pounding in fear - and pounding double for the things she chased.

_Dawn_

and _him._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops - forgot this.
> 
> Thank you for reading and reviewing and kudos-ing!
> 
> P!nk - “Please Don’t Leave Me”

Bog lowered himself into the bone throne and dug his claws into the armrest to stop himself from tapping them anxiously.

What had he _done?_

It had been an empty threat, of course - he wasn’t about to marry some intoxicated fairy just to prove a point - but he had said the words in a fit of pique and, if the potion wasn’t returned in time, he would have to admit that it had all been bluster - and that was no good. A king had to be believed when he made threats, especially when his neighbors were silly-minded and prone to unleashing dangerous substances on the land. Peace and order largely depended on fear of the Bog King’s wrath.

That would probably work itself out, though. Either the fairies would produce the potion in time, or they would be too relieved when he declined to marry the spitfire to realize he was making a concession.

No, the real worry was closer to home.

Inevitably, news of his “engagement” was going to get back to his mother. Maybe, if he was very lucky, the situation would already be resolved by then. The best he could do was keep things moving along. Occupy his subjects with something other than gossip.

“Bring me the prisoner.”

She was already there, of course, snug in her kidnapping bag as goblins murmured hungrily around her. It was all a part of the presentation - which seemed to be having its desired effect, if the shaking of the bag was anything to go by. Stuff and Thang untied the rope and revealed her.

She had fluffy yellow hair and enormous blue eyes that fixed on Bog, then flicked around the goblins looming around her with some trepidation. Not outright terror.

Not yet.

“So,” Bog said, cracking his neck and baring his teeth, “what have we here?”

“Um,” the fairy stood up and tried on an uncertain smile. “Hi… My name is Dawn.”

Bog curled his lip and was about to make a quip about appetizers with names, but the fairy laced her fingers in front of her and peered up at him with hardly-restrained openness. Her wings lifted slowly, flittered.

“You must be the Bog King,” she said, and to Bog’s consternation, her smile was creeping wider. “Are you… the guy my sister was singing to?”

Bog snapped upright on his throne. “No! Well, yes, but-“ He waved a clawed hand as if to shoo the topic away. “-the love potion…”

“Oh yeah,” she said with a little shrug, looking down. “I guess it would take a magical intervention for Marianne.”

Bog glowered at her, insulted despite knowing better. The fairy took one look at his face and gave a little jump, then patted the air before her.

“Not because of you or anything! She’s just… not the biggest fan of love? So it makes sense that it would take a potion to make her break out in song like that.”

“Fascinating as that is,” Bog sneered, “you’d be wise to have a care for your own… _tenuous_ situation, princess. You’re in the Dark Forest, now. _Love_ ,” he drew out the word, warped it with all his scathing, “should be the furthest thing from your mind.”

His goblins shook off their stunned expressions and started growling and licking their chops on cue. The fairy scrunched her shoulders in a little, glancing around warily. She stood on the rumpled kidnapping bag like it was an island of safety.

“Oh! But you wouldn’t hurt me,” she said, somewhere between believing it and hoping it was true. “I mean, I’m your probably-future sister-in-law!”

“Future _what_ -in- _what?_ ”

With a terrible sinking feeling, Bog dropped his face into his hand. Griselda entered the throne room a moment after her voice, beady eyes glittering, every tooth in her face showing in a grin as she looked from her son to the captive fairy.

“Did I hear wedding talk? Has it finally happened? Has my son finally found _the one_?”

“Not now, Mother!”

She ignored him and turned fully to address the fairy. “ _Your_ sister and _my_ son? How’d _that_ happen?”

“ _Nothing happened,_ ” Bog barked, but his authority over this situation was already completely usurped.

The fairy smiled and quickly explained about the love potion, apparently unfazed at the abrupt appearance of the queen-mother, but then a sudden thought occurred to her and she tapped a finger to her chin.

“But I guess Marianne will probably have some things to say about it when she finally sings herself out.” She cut her eyes over at Bog, a sympathetic wince coming over her honey-sweet features. “Oh boy, I do not envy you that conversation.”

“What?” he scoffed. “You think she’ll give me a real _talking to_?”

“If it was me she was mad at? Yes. But for you? After what happened at the festival?” The fairy’s large eyes flicked to the side, then her face split into a nervous smile. “Marianne, uh, really likes her sword. It might be… a sword kind of conversation.”

Bog scoffed and rolled his eyes. It was laughable to suggest he should be worried about a fairy princess with a sword. He’d seen her with that sword at the festival – she’d lost it so fast, there hadn’t been much to see. Besides, she’d been well-contained by her people last he’d seen her. Whatever her optimistic sister might think, it was unlikely Bog would ever see his _fiancee_ again.

It was as his eyes rolled skyward that he noticed movement in the moonlight. He had enough time to leap to his feet and swing his staff around-

-before a missile of purple wings and steel crashed through the skylight and fell upon him with a wild cry. Bog fell back into the throne when he caught the sword with his staff.

“…my… sister,” she rasped at him, planting her feet and bearing down.

The impact had knocked out his breath. That’s why he didn’t answer for a second, and just stared up into her golden eyes. Like a hawk’s eyes.

“Here I am,” Dawn said brightly from across the throne room.

The potion-crazed fairy turned without easing up on her sword and visually confirmed that her sister was, indeed, there. Bog followed her stare long enough to see the younger’s cheeky face mouth the words _told you so._

Then, his wits returned and he shoved his attacker away with a kick to her gut. She fluttered back in the air, her attention all on him again. Bog regained his feet and stood ready, but she just hovered there for a second, her eyes wide and open and rooting straight through him. He didn’t know how to read that look, so he ground his teeth and glowered back, stretching his arms out to either side in invitation.

“Well, princess? Did you come for a fight or what?”

Her eyes narrowed and she swooped at him, a new song instantly on her lips.

“ _I don’t know if I can yell any louder!_ ”

She was quick, he’d give her that. Bog parried a flurry of fast stabs and overhead chops all at a fair clip - but then she struck and used her wings to put that wicked blade a few deadly inches closer to his chest, and he realized she was actually good. Tricky. Innovative.

“ _I can be so mean when I wanna be! I am capable of really anything! I can cut you into pieces…_ ”

“Big talk,” he grunted as he shoved her away, “for such a little fairy.”

He let her press him back, then caught her blade angled near his neck, locking the hilt in the ornamental curls of his staff. She leaned in. Her breath wafted between her chisel-sharp teeth and through the folds of his collar scales. Her eye makeup, he noticed, was streaked, spilled down her cheeks in places. She looked _stricken_.

She had been crying.

“… _when my heart is… broken…”_

Crying… because, potion or not, she was in love with him… and he had left her behind.

“ _Plee-ease, don’t leave me…_ ”

Bog felt an unwilling pang in his chest for this poor creature. He couldn’t have cared less about fairy tears and the half-wits who spilled them, but this fairy was… different. Not the biggest fan of love, her sister had said. He could see it in her eyes, now. He could hear it in her haunted voice. She was trapped. Like a moth battering itself to pieces inside a jar.

Abruptly, she shoved away from him and began circling back and forth, looking for an opening in his defenses. He didn’t give it to her. He might be experiencing a momentary lapse of pity for her, but that didn’t mean he was going to let her stick him with that sword.

“ _Can’t you tell that this is all just a contest? The one that wins will be the one that hits the hardest!_ ”

She struck, four quick slashes and a sudden leg sweep that Bog evaded - but not without finding the wall at his back. And then she was there close in front of him again, her sword lowered at her side and her eyes yearning up at him. He held his staff between them, but she seemed not to notice.

“ _But baby, I don’t mean it._ ” She lifted a hand and, frowning at it as if it didn’t belong to her, placed it on his chest. “ _I mean it…_ ”

Her hand was warm against him. Her eyes rolled slowly up his neck, his chin, his mouth.

“ _I promise…_ ”

“Stop that.” Heat flooded Bog’s face. He pushed his staff away firmly, putting a decent gap between their bodies. She leaned her weight against it so that her fingertips could still brush against his pectoral plate.

“ _Pleee-ease… don’t leave me…_ ”

“Ask him. He’ll appreciate it.”

“Need any help, sire?”

“No!”

The goblins had spread out in a loose circle around the throne, prepared to intervene if their king signaled for them. But even pressed between the fairy and the wall, Bog didn’t want help. This… he wanted to do this himself.

He shoved her away and sprang clear of the wall, using the full length of his staff to ward her back. The fairy paced him, and it was a relief to see the fury etch its lines back into her face. Anything but that wretched longing.

“ _I forgot to say out loud!_ ” She slashed as she chased him around the throne and up the wall, teeth bared the entire time. “ _How beautiful you really are to me!_ ”

“Ha!” Bog knocked the sword out of her hand and she did a gymnastic maneuver that should have been impossible with her bulky wings, managing to kick him hard in the stomach as she dropped back to the floor to retrieve her weapon. He dove fast to meet her in a clash of sparks and took her straight back to the ground with his greater weight.

 _“And I need you…_ ” She skipped out of the way before he could land on her, but staggered a step off-balance. “ _I’m sorry…_ ”

“Sure you are,” Bog growled under his breath. She was clearly tiring. It was time to end this. With a burst of speed that tapped the last of his own energy, he knocked her sword arm wide and put himself inside her space, snatching her weapon hand to keep that blade from angling back in on him.

His arm was crossed between them, and her empty left hand balled up like she meant to hit him, but Bog wasn’t about to let her go. He just snarled at her, dared her to do it.

“ _Please don’t leave me…_ ”

She punched him. Not as hard as she had at the festival – wrong arm, bad stance – but it wasn’t a love-tap and it crunched right into his temple. Bog could instantly feel a headache originating from the scale on his brow.

“Marianne!” cried the sister, finally having had enough of watching this little melodrama play out. “Stop! You’re gonna hurt him!”

Marianne, who had her fist balled up and drawn back to hit him again, stilled. She looked uncertain, peering up at Bog’s face as if she might have unwittingly done him a mortal injury. As if she actually cared.

“She will _not_ ,” he ground out without looking away from her, “ _hurt_ me. I’m not some delicate fairy flower. I’m a goblin. I can take whatever she dishes out - unless she manages to run me through with her _wee blade_.”

He said the last with a mocking curl of his lip, just so he could watch those fierce eyes - which had flitted down to his mouth while he was talking - widen in outrage.

“You can tell me how _wee_ it is,” she panted, “when I shove it up your-“

“ _Marianne!_ ” squeaked the other princess.

“Woah!” Bog drew up straight in the same instant. “Let’s keep this civil, shall we?”

Her eyes flashed pointedly to her sword hand, still gripped tight in his much bigger claws. Her cheeks went faintly pink in what could have been either anger or contrition. It was hard to tell from the way she glared at him.

“Do you want to keep your sword, Tough Girl?”

“Yes.” She said it like the very question was offensive.

“Then I’ll need you to stop trying to gut me with it.”

It was foolish to let her keep the sword, he knew that - she was dangerous and unpredictable - but the thought of taking it away from her didn’t sit right with him.

“I would never-“ She flinched, then hardened. “Then I’ll need _you_ to release my sister.”

“She goes free when the potion is returned. You of all people should appreciate how dangerous it is, now.”

A look of confusion clouded her face, and she shook her head hard like she was trying to dislodge something. Her free hand latched onto his arm above the elbow. “There was… a potion…”

Bog didn’t like the feeling he got watching her struggle. Bad enough that this… uniquely interesting fairy was trapped in something she didn’t want, but to think… to think he had tried to do this to that lovely creature those years ago…

It was a lucky thing really that he was so devastatingly ugly. Better that the potion had failed.

But why had it succeeded this time?

“Oh, Marianne.”

Bog was broken from his reverie as the sister - Dawn, he reminded himself - approached to gently lay a hand on her slumped shoulder. At the contact, Marianne turned fully to her and swept her into a tight one-armed hug.

Suddenly finding himself uncomfortably close to this gushy fairy display of emotion, Bog swiftly released his grip on her hand and took a big step back. Her sword sank rapidly so that the tip clanked against the floor.

Marianne looked up at him from over her sister’s shoulder.

“I want you to send an escort to take my sister home safely.”

“What?” Dawn jerked back from her.

Bog found himself unsurprised - relieved, actually. Butting heads with her was a marked improvement over the gushy stuff. It was actually kind of… fun. So he may have been a little smug-faced as he held himself straight and tall.

“No.”

“You don’t need two hostages, and I’m staying,” Marianne insisted.

“You’re both staying,” Bog agreed. “In the dungeon. Until I get my potion.”

Marianne lifted her sword and opened her mouth, but Dawn swung around her first, still hugging her and managing to put herself in the way.

“Oh, can’t we both stay, Marianne? I don’t want you to be alone here. And besides, it’s just a few hours before moondown. Then we can go home together.”

Marianne was silent for a moment, glaring up at Bog with no small amount of accusation. Finally, she lowered her sword again. “Fine. You can stay until moondown.”

Her sister may not have caught the implication, but Bog didn’t miss it; after moondown, only one fairy princess was going to be leaving his castle. The other would be taking up residence here. And Bog was starting to think there wasn’t a force that would stop her from doing just as she pleased.

Was it her that burned so hot, or was it the potion?

Not that it mattered. Without the potion, she would never have looked twice at him. Even with it, she was far more impassioned in her efforts to see him bleed than in her moments of tenderness.

Not that Bog was bitter about that. No, of course not! It was better this way. Nothing too… untoward had happened yet. If he could manage to cure her before she did something she would really regret, maybe she would just go home - instead of deciding to actually battle him to the death to regain her honor. Or whatever fairies did.

With a whirl of his staff, he commanded a cluster of nearby goblins.

“Escort the princesses to their cell.”

He watched the way Marianne clenched her fist around her sword, the way she laid her wings down and kept a firm hold on her sister. The way she stared back at him with some hard unspoken promise as she was herded from the throne room.

And in his chest, he felt a terrible swoop. This situation had to be resolved. _Now._

“Stuff. Thang. Bring me Sugar Plum.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, and for the reviews and kudos! I'm kind of still trying to figure out how AO3 works sometimes, so apologies for mixups on my... paperwork? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Hope you like the new chapter!
> 
> Rihanna - "What Now?"

When the goblins finally left them in the cell, Marianne was feeling better. A little. Sort of. She wasn’t singing, at least.

The fight had taken the jagged edge off her temper and then… he had been… decent. He hadn’t disarmed her, even though he could have. He hadn’t thrown her out of the castle or mocked her weakness. He had fought her hard, had shown respect for her skill. Marianne hadn’t expected any of that. She had kind of thought she was throwing herself on his mercy, and that there wouldn’t be much to cushion that fall.

But it turned out there was. Somehow. And now she felt more lost than ever.

“Oh my god,” Dawn was saying, grinning as she perched on a mushroom. “I know this is awful, but it’s also kind of the best thing that’s ever happened. I thought you were never going to get over Roland, and now-“ She threw her arms around herself. “Love at first sight? Lucky…”

“Is that- Is that what’s happening to me?”

“Basically. I mean, so you had to get splashed with a little love potion to get there. So what? At least you _get_ to love again.”

Marianne dug a hand through her hair and leaned on her sword as Dawn’s words washed past her. Her chest felt packed full, like if she turned the wrong way she was either going to vomit or start singing again. “I - rrh! - I feel like I’m losing my mind. I can’t stop thinking about him. I _just_ saw him and I _miss_ him-!”

Dawn fluttered and squealed giddily.

“-and I just want to touch him and-“ Marianne held up her hand and clenched her fingers like claws. “-just _tear_ him apart…”

“Oh,” Dawn said with a grimace. “That’s… not really romantic, but, I guess… love takes different forms?”

Marianne sighed and fell back against the wall, letting her head thump back so she could stare upward and not into her sister’s uncertain, innocent eyes. “He doesn’t love me back, Dawn.”

To her disgust, she felt the tears welling up again, and she blinked until the burn relented.

“He doesn’t want me.”

It struck her to the core, right on the fault line of the scar Roland left on her heart. Unwanted. Too sharp. Too violent. Too… Marianne.

“Hey…” Dawn’s hands settled warm on her shoulders, but she didn’t dare look away from the cobwebby ceiling. “He just hasn’t had a chance to get to know you yet. When he does, he’s gonna love you. How could he not?”

Marianne sniffed. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t like being _attacked?_ ”

“He seemed okay with it. Actually, he seemed kind of into it.” She pulled a face. “Which is… weird… but, I guess he is a goblin, and if it works for both of you…”

_I can take whatever she dishes out…_

His voice, so close to her, saying the words… just the memory made her neck prickle. The way his hand had felt wrapped around hers, warm and dry and callused, and his breath had brushed her cheek just for a second. The way he had met her attacks, snarl for snarl. The way his blue eyes had glinted with excitement when she pulled out a new move… the little upward twitch on one side of his hard mouth…

Marianne’s whole body felt electric. Her heart raced. She felt like she was stepping on stones across a rushing stream, daringly dipping her toes in water that could drag her under in one careless instant.

“It doesn’t matter,” she snapped suddenly, pulling away so that she could pace. She worked her fingers around the hilt of her sword - tighten, release, tighten, release. “I… I need to fight this, Dawn. I can’t just let this happen to me again. I _can’t_. But I’m… I can’t get away…”

“No, Marianne,” Dawn followed her, almost pleading. “It’s okay that you feel this way. It’s okay to have feelings-“

Marianne hardly heard. Her throat was closing up. She felt it coming, but she couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t stop-

“ _I’ve been ignoring this big lump in my throat, I shouldn’t be crying, tears are for the weak. The days I’m stronger, know what, so I say - that something’s missing…_ ”

She paced, and sang, and Dawn watched helplessly, clutching her fingers together in front of her chest.

“ _Whatever it is, if feels like it’s laughing at me through the glass of a two-sided mirror…_ ” She swung her sword, knocking a mushroom against the wall. “ _Whatever it is, it’s just_ laughing _at me - and I just wanna scream…_ ”

Marianne was swept up in the song, but she heard Dawn’s voice rise up with hers, a gentler echo that steadied her.

“ _What now? I just can’t figure it out! What? Now? Guess I’ll just wait it out…_ ”

* * *

Bog glowered through the spider-silk orb. “ _What_ do you _mean_ , _‘true love’?_ ”

The Sugar Plum Fairy shrugged and tapped her tiny twinkling chin. “Gee, I wonder what that could possibly mean.”

“She means the real thing,” Griselda said, flat and loud, “not some shortcut whipped up in a hurry by a _charlatan_.”

Plum sniffed disdainfully. Bog let his eyes roll up into his aching skull.

“That doesn’t help anything! How can I possibly get her to fall in love with someone else when she’s already under the spell?”

“Well, I guess you could use the potion again and make sure someone else stands in front this-“

“ _No!_ ”

“Then you’ll just have to marry a fairy and raise little half-fairy half-goblins for the rest of your days!” Plum pulled a face of entirely feigned horror and pretended to faint.

Bog ground his teeth.

“Now that’s an interesting thought,” Griselda said, almost as if it was a brand new idea and not something she had been transparently contemplating since she walked into the throne room earlier. Between her and the reports coming in now about love-dusted creatures all over the forest, Bog was beset on all sides.

“It is neither _interesting_ ,” he snarled, “nor _feasible_. You saw her yourself, Mother, she’s half mad from the potion.”

“Mad about _you!_ ”

“It’s nothing to do with me! If she’d laid eyes on an earwig first, she’d be chasing _that_ around.” Bog paced the width of the throne room, seething. “She probably wouldn’t be so torn up about it, either...”

His mother watched him with nothing short of ecstatic joy, lacing her fingers together under one jaw. “I _knew_ you liked this one.”

He slumped, scowling at her. “Fine,” he said nastily. “She’s…” He gestured with his claws before his chest. “…interesting. For a fairy.”

Griselda snatched up one of his dangling hands and beamed up at him. “Why don’t you just give her a chance to get to know you? Who knows? Maybe something real can grow out of this mess.”

Bog wrenched his hand away and dragged it down his face. “And how would I know the difference? How would _she_ know? It’s just not poss-”

He heard voices - both of them, now - echoing up from the dungeon in an imploring dirge.

“Oh what _now?_ ” he snarled, and flew off in a rattle of wings, cursing fairies under his breath.

Griselda watched him go, so delighted that even the pesky Plum’s scathing commentary couldn’t dim her mood. The dining hall just needed a few more touches. With a new bounce in her step, she scurried off to finish cutting up leaves.

* * *

Marianne leaned on the wall, heaving out her song. She was distantly aware of Dawn beside her, rubbing her shoulder like she was soothing her through an illness.

“ _Can’t even get the emotions to come out - dry as a bone but I just wanna shout - What now? I just-_ ”

“Alright, alright,” snarled a voice from the shadowy stairs, and then he appeared in a rush of air and wings, looking ferociously irritable. “Enough _singing_.”

Marianne wasn’t aware of approaching the bars and scratching her hand on one of the thorns as she gripped in the wrong place. She just stared out at him, drinking in the sight of him and hating herself for how it soothed her.

He scowled back at her, but the heat seeped out of it after a silent beat. Then he was just watching her, frowning and waiting.

She needed to say something. Something that didn’t come off as needy or aggressive. Something normal. Cool.

“Hey.”

He eyed her skeptically. “Hello… princess.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, instantly regretting her tone. “Call me Marianne. Or… you can call me Tough Girl.”

She was blushing. It felt horrible, hot and cold all over her face and neck. He was just… staring at her, his eyes so blue and inscrutable. He had such lovely eyes.

“What, uh, do I call you?”

“I’m the Bog King,” he said, standing straighter, prouder. He even rapped one fist against his chest.

Marianne followed the gesture with acute interest. It meant something, that fist against that sturdy chest. It made her stomach clench. When she met his eyes again, he frowned at whatever he was seeing on her face.

“…but… I suppose you can call me… Bog.”

“Bog,” she repeated, clenching her fingers around the thorny bar. “I, uh, I really enjoyed our fight.”

“Aye,” he said, and his mouth did the thing, tipping up on one side. “You’re pretty good. Probably even better when you’re not… under the influence.”

It was the first real compliment she had gotten on a skill she had invested hours into honing. His praise stroked over her like a physical touch, and Marianne smiled back at him. Too wide, too bright. She quickly moderated her expression. Bog scrutinized her.

“Or did you mean to continue that fight?”

Marianne followed the sweep of his eyes down to the sword still dangling from her hand. “Oh. No,” she said, frowning down at it. “No. I just… it feels good to hold it… Like…” She struggled, searching the shadows behind him. “…being in control?”

He gave a half-nod as if this made perfect sense, but said nothing. Marianne looked at him, then away, then back again as she struggled to think what to say. She felt so raw and exposed already, like he must be able to read her love, her desperation, her vulnerability, all in her face. She felt like such a fool.

“Thank you,” she snapped. “For not taking it. I don’t… _really_ … want to gut you with it. So you’re probably safe.”

“Good to know.” That smile was back, faint and teasing. He hesitated, then tipped his head and asked, “Out of curiosity, do you take a sword to all your suitors?”

“No,” Marianne said a little defensively. Dawn chimed in at the same time from where she sprawled on a mushroom across the cell.

“What suitors?”

“Surely the crown princess has suitors,” Bog said, and Marianne’s heart thumped in her chest at the probing, the implications. She stared at his incredulously raised eyebrow, hope zinging through her. Hope - and fear… because she didn’t have suitors. Because she wasn’t normal. And what if he figured that out and-?

“Since she broke off her last engagement and publicly scolded her fiancee for trying to make amends,” Dawn said, “the boys have kind of all been avoiding her.”

“Dawn!” Marianne shot her a manic not-smile. “Stop helping.”

But Bog just went on looking at her, his mouth curving up a little more. “But still no surprise sword attack for the last fiancee?”

“He didn’t kidnap my sister,” Marianne said, just a bit snidely. Bog full-on smirked and replied in an undertone.

“His loss.”

Marianne stared up at him, startled by the throb of heat that went through her at the growling quality of his voice and his apparent pleasure. He _did_ like fighting with her. Having it confirmed was like opening a floodgate and unleashing a roaring froth of feelings that hissed and tingled through her.

“But can you imagine his face?” Dawn was giggling, somewhere far away. “Oh! And if you actually hit _him_ in his face? He would-“

Marianne didn’t really absorb what her sister was saying, but she did hear her sword clang to the floor after it slipped from her slack fingers. Then she noticed Bog’s troubled look. He took a step back toward the stairs.

“I should be-“

“Don’t go.”

He stopped, but didn’t come any closer. Instead, he considered her with… was it pity? His eyes flicked down, and his mouth hardened.

“You’ve cut yourself.”

Marianne looked down and blinked in surprise at her hands where they were both fisted tight around the bars. Gingerly, she released her grip and discovered he was right. There were deep scratches on her fingers and palms from where the thorns had gouged into her. She hadn’t even noticed, but they stung, a slow throb with her heartbeat.

Bog heaved a sigh and opened the cell. “Come on, Tough Girl. Let’s fix you up.”

Marianne glanced back over her shoulder at Dawn, who waved her away excitedly.

“She’ll be safe here,” Bog said. “You have my word.”

She looked back at him, up and up into his gentle eyes-

Gentle? When had they become gentle?

-and then strode past him out of the cell. She was so aware of walking beside him up the spiraling stairs that she didn’t notice the empty scabbard at her side, her sword left on the dungeon floor, forgotten.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and that other great stuff! We're getting near the end, now!
> 
> The Cars - "Just What I Needed"

Bog felt colossally stupid. He shouldn’t have let Marianne out of the cell. He should have just brought some ointment and bandages to her and kept her locked up with her sister. Taking her off alone was a terrible idea for at least… _three_ readily-evident reasons.

And yet here he was, bowing slightly for her to enter the doorway to the dining hall before him like he was some Light Fields dandy and then following too closely and accidentally bumping into her when she stopped suddenly-

Because the dining hall, he observed, was in the midst of a frightening transformation.

Red streamers hung from the ceiling, supporting a great cloud of red balloons. There were snap-flowers on the table. Stick-bundle arches loomed over the doorways with red ribbon looped around them. Stuff and Thang were bickering quietly as they set up a misshapen red “LOFE” heart. There was an inexplicable… topiary…

And in the middle of it all was his mother, sitting on one of the benches, cutting heart shapes out of red leaves. Upon their entrance, she leapt to her feet in a flurry of papery red confetti.

“You’re early! Oh! Well I guess it’s not as polished as I wanted it to be, but under the circumstances, it’ll do.” She scooted around the room, gathering up scissors and paste and straightening the plates of snacks and talking the entire time. “Now, there’s tart-berries and nutcakes, and a bit of juniper spirits - but not too much!” She wagged a teasing finger at them where they stood transfixed in the doorway, then swept around them. “Have fun, you two!”

In the corner, Stuff and Thang began to sing.

“Stop,” Bog managed, not with half the snarl he intended. “Get out.”

They went, prattling on together as they always did, apparently completely unaware of their king’s complete mortification. Marianne was still a step ahead of him, so he couldn’t see her face. He inched sideways away from her.

“This isn’t what I- I didn’t mean to bring you into-”

She turned to face him with a pained, nervous expression on her face. “I know I’m… _supposed_ to like this stuff… but I hate it.”

“I hate it more,” he said quickly.

She smiled at him - that sudden, fierce smile from before that she quickly shuttered away again, her eyes watchful on his face. “Love is… terrible.”

“Nothing but misery.”

“It makes you weak.”

“And stupid.” Bog’s mouth was horribly dry.

“And _blind_ ,” she said, baring her teeth as she strained against something he couldn’t see. “It makes you trust people - and then they can just _destroy_ you.”

“It makes you want things you know you can never have.”

She peered up at him, imploring. Bog looked away, suddenly embarrassed all over again. That had been a stupid thing to say. Too near a truth he didn’t want to dredge up.

“Is that-?” He strode past her to the table and picked through the contents of a small basket. “First aid supplies. My mother…”

He picked out a little pot of ointment and turned back-

-only to find Marianne had followed him and was standing _right there_ so that when he turned, she was practically in his arms, her hands already on his chest, her startled eyes full of firelight and her dark lips slightly parted.

Bog felt heat wash down his face, then his neck, then pool where her hands pressed to his chest and, to his horror, _lower_. He cleared his throat and backed away, offering the ointment at arm’s length.

She looked at it, but didn’t take it. Instead, she held up her scratched hands. “Would you… I mean, if you don’t mind?”

He should say no. He should toss her the ointment from across the room. And then leave the room. He was a king. No doubt there was a crisis somewhere he could be absorbed with.

But the way she looked at him… As if hearing him deny her out loud was going to crush some delicate part of her that she kept so well hidden under her tough exterior.

 _…and then they can just_ destroy _you…_

It wouldn’t do any harm, surely, just to tend her hands. That was innocent enough. Even if she came out of the potion in a rage, she’d know he was only trying to be kind. Not… taking advantage.

Bog gestured so that she would sit at the table - and when she straddled the bench, his ears rang. After a tense hesitation, he flitted over the table and took a seat across from her. She didn’t comment on it, but she blushed and kept her eyes fixed on her hands, laid out palms-up on the table.

There was a little blood, so he wet a napkin with some juniper spirits and dabbed at it, being careful to only touch her skin with the damp cloth. Her hands were so small and fragile-looking next to his armored skin and long, clawed fingers. When Marianne winced, Bog snatched away.

“Sorry-“

“No,” she said, frowning and blushing. “It just stings. Listen, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“It’s not that-“ Bog bit his tongue and reached out to continue cleaning off her hands. “I just don’t want to hurt you.”

Her eyes snapped up to his face, but he stayed focused on his task. It made him uncomfortable, that stare… but he would let her look her fill. Maybe if she looked at his hideous face long enough, the potion would wear off on its own.

The ointment was trickier to apply. He had to actually touch her, so he was very careful to use just the soft pad of his finger and keep the tip of his claw away. Finally, he fished a roll of bandage out of the basket and wrapped it a few times around her right hand. He was beginning to wrap up her left hand when he noticed her knuckle was scraped.

From where she had punched him.

Bog smirked as he dabbed it with ointment. “Would you look at that. You hurt your _wee_ hand on my face.”

She scoffed, her look amused and annoyed in about equal measure. “Your face didn’t get out of it unscathed, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Bog wasn’t surprised. His head still ached faintly from it, and he knew that scale was probably cracked and bruising near where it flared off his brow. What surprised him was how, as soon as he tied off the bandage on her left hand and made to withdraw, she leaned over the table and stroked her fingertips over that tender spot.

Bog froze in place, staring at Marianne in shock as she flitted light as a summer breeze off the bench and over to settle on the table beside him, her boots planted on the bench where he sat ramrod straight and too stunned to speak. She already had the ointment in her hands.

“Let me.”

As if he could refuse her. All he could do was gape up at her as she sank her finger in the ointment and leaned in, her breath soft on his cheeks and his great knife of a nose and her touch feather light on his swollen brow. The look on her face was determined, gentle… remorseful.

“It’s nothing,” he managed. His voice came out gruffer than he meant it to. “Hardly makes a difference on a face like mine.”

Marianne frowned at him, sharp and sudden, her finger still poised near his eye. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Bog curled his lip and tried to turn away, but she caught him by the chin and held him in place.

“It makes a difference. Your face is… every inch is marked with some detail, or some thought you’re holding back. You sneer and snarl but…” She ran the fingers of her other hand up to his jagged cheekbone, tweaking his whiskery bristles as she passed, then up to the scaled ridges on his forehead, pressing the thin chitin so it flexed under her close gaze. “…I like that. Handsome faces are just masks for liars. You have an honest face. A good face.”

This wasn’t happening. There was no way this was really happening. It simply was not real. The slim fingers combing through his headscales were not real - no matter how they rustled or felt so good - and neither were the dazzling honey eyes pouring their sweetness into his own. Because sweetness was not for Bog. Not ever.

He knew better. But he drank it in anyway. He felt it lodge itself inside him, like a hook catching, tearing into the fool that gulped it down.

But then her other hand stroked his cheek, and he felt her breath on his mouth as she began to lean toward him, eyes half-lidded with intent.

“Stop,” he gasped. “You have to stop.”

Marianne did stop. All in a rush, she stared at him wide-eyed, and yanked her hands away, and leapt down from the table.

Bog stayed where he sat, breathing hard and digging his claws into the tabletop as if still fighting to keep them from sweeping around her waist and pulling her to him. He listened to Marianne pace behind him, hyperaware of exactly where she stood.

He felt the ghost of her touch on his skin, burning still.

“I’m sorry,” she was saying. “That was over the line. That wasn’t okay. I didn’t mean to… I just got carried away and…”

“It’s the potion,” Bog finally grated out, as much to himself as to her. “What you’re feeling - it’s not real. It’s just the potion.”

She stopped pacing just behind him, and her silence was ominous. Bog gathered himself, mustered all his control, and finally whipped around and surged to his feet in the same movement.

His glare faltered almost at once. Marianne stared up at him. Tears glimmered in her angry eyes, not quite spilling.

“It’s real.” She clutched at her chest, shaking her head. “It’s- I know what love feels like, and this is it. And I- I know you don’t love me back, but… to say that what I’m feeling isn’t real is… cruel.”

“I, um…” Bog withdrew, his posture hunching unconsciously as he brought his claws together before him to click as he scrambled to think. “I only mean that you… aren’t entirely… You would regret it later if… And I don’t want you to…”

“Okay,” she said tightly. The tears were spilling down her cheeks now. “You’ve made that clear. I’ll just- I can show myself back to the dungeon.”

“No, I don’t mean-!”

She flew over the table and made for the door and Bog knew he had blundered and that in a second she would be gone back to the dungeon and she could take her sister and go and he may never get a chance to tell her-

-and that hook, sunk deep in him like a mortal wound, wouldn’t let him let her go.

“ _I don’t mind you coming here…_ ”

Marianne stopped in the doorway as if snagged on a line. Bog swallowed, and cursed himself, and went on painfully, slowly.

“ _…and wasting all my time…_ ”

She turned, watching him with those wide, suspicious eyes. It was too hard to meet that stare and go on, so Bog frowned down at the table.

“ _…’cause when you’re standing oh so near… I kind of lose my mind…_ ” He licked his lips, flinched. “ _Yeah…_ ”

He looked up, almost afraid to see, but she was there, just on the other side of the table. Her face looked so hungry, so uncertain.

“Marianne, your feelings for me… You’ll come to regret them in time.”

“I don’t think I will.”

“No, you will.” Bog insisted. “Because I won’t let you live your entire life under a curse. I’ll find another cure for the love potion. Even if it takes years, I’ll figure something out. And then,” he leaned his head forward, scowling, “then, you’ll be glad I stopped you.”

She frowned at him, clearly frustrated, and folded her arms over her chest. “So you’re saying, even if I go on… feeling this way about you for _years_ , you’re never going to let me kiss you.”

Bog, unable to speak, shook his head sharply.

“So I guess the wedding’s off.”

“The-?” He was confused for a moment, but then he remembered. Yes, he had threatened to marry her - as incentive. It was hard to be sure of what she was hearing and what the potion deafened her to. Bog folded his arms over his chest. “There was never going to be a wedding. I said that because the mere prospect of my marrying you is so terrifying to your people, they might stop dancing and giggling long enough to bring back my potion. When your father comes to return it at moondown, he’ll be expecting to take you home.”

Her eyes went wide and furious. “I was wrong. You _are_ a liar.”

“A bluff isn’t the same as a lie,” he huffed. “Besides, I’d be worse than a liar if I did marry you - you’re in no state to consent to such a thing. Not that you ever even consented anyway, in case you’ve forgotten!”

“It was implicit,” she snarled, “in the fact I was singing myself hoarse just so you’d look at me!”

“That’s not the same thing and you know it!”

“Then I consent now!”

“You _can’t_ consent because I never _asked_ you!”

“Rrah!” She slammed her fists down on the table, making the snacks jump on their plates. Bog’s wings flickered reflexively, but he stood firm under her glower as she pointed at him. “Stop throwing weak excuses in my way and _say it!_! Admit you won’t have me!”

“Oh, I’ll have you,” Bog growled. “Reclaim your _sanity_ and then ask me again.”

Marianne blinked, eyelids fluttering oddly.

Then the moment passed and she glared back at him with the same intensity. She straightened slowly, her mouth turned down bitterly and her arms folded across her chest like a shield.

“And what’s the measure for my sanity, exactly? What will it take for me to be deemed sane enough to make my own decisions?”

Bog hesitated. He could say the singing… but she wasn’t singing now, hadn’t sung for a while. He could say the longing looks she cast him… but she wasn’t doing that now, either. Instead, she regarded him, steady and annoyed and so clearly unhappy.

He _should_ say “When you stop loving me,” but the hook in him snagged, pulled, held. Maybe it was vanity, hopeless impossible hope, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. The words sounded tiny in the silent room.

Marianne watched him a moment longer, then turned on her heel and strode from the dining hall without a word. Bog stared after her-

-and the hook through his heart _pulled_.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Thanks extra for reviews and kudos!
> 
> I thought this was the last chapter, but it looks like there's one more after this. 
> 
> Peter Gabriel - "In Your Eyes"

Marianne made her way back to the dungeon alone, gnashing her teeth. Her head spun with arguments and denials and Bog’s infuriating stubbornness and his low voice echoing in her ears.

_Oh, I’ll have you._

A little shudder traveled through her, and she had to stop mid-step until it subsided. She was breathing harder, her fingers twisting in the hem of her tunic at her hips. He wanted her. He _liked_ her. She had thought… _hoped_ that he might, when she had been touching his face and he had stared back at her like she was brilliant and miraculous as the moon. For that instant, after a life of being wrong in more ways than not, she had felt _right_ \- because he looked at her like she _was_ right, like there was no better way for her to be than just… Marianne _._

But he wouldn’t let her kiss him. He was never going to let her kiss him. Because despite being the allegedly evil king of the goblins, the Bog King was evidently plagued with a deep and abiding code of chivalry. Which made Marianne want to wrap her hands around his throat and just… Not exactly choke him. More like shake him like she would shake Dawn in the hopes of stirring up some good sense.

Marianne was so distracted, she didn’t notice the noise coming from below until she rounded the final curve and saw a dozen or so creatures strung up in the cages that had been empty before, singing a tragic chorus.

“ _…only fools… rush… in…_ ”

She stopped and grimaced and watched them reach desperately for each other as they sang with their faces pressed to the bars. A few goblins were busy wrestling a fairy away from the toad she had been open-mouth smooching.

Was this… Was this what had happened to _her?_ Was this… the love potion?

It seemed highly unlikely. This was all so grotesque and simple - and what she felt for Bog was so complicated. She loved him and hated him… or she had hated loving him… either way, it had all been a frenzied blur of feelings that she only vaguely remembered, now.

Because now, she realized, those feelings had settled and shifted into a tighter, sturdier configuration. Because it turned out Bog was… actually an alright person, kidnappings aside. He was a good person. Kind. Awkward. Irritatingly principled. The hate that had first burned through her for him was gone, and she was left vulnerable without it… because now, quite suddenly, she found she trusted him.

He said Dawn would be safe down here and, there she was, napping on a mushroom in the cell. He said he didn’t want to hurt her and bandaged her hands with a tenderness she never would have expected from those taloned fingers, a tenderness that had her blood buzzing through her like a swarm of dragonflies. He said he’d find a cure for the love potion and Marianne believed him… sort of.

Although, she kind of hoped he didn’t end up keeping his word on that one. She was starting to like loving Bog. If he figured out a way to make her stop, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t go back to hating him but…

…but what if it was just the potion that made her think that?

No, that was stupid. There was nothing wrong with Marianne’s perceptions. She was just-

One of the goblins, a fishy-froggy looking creature with more snaggle than tooth (who she vaguely remembered having a pleasant singing voice) noticed her and pointed.

“Oh! Oh! Prisoner escaping! Prisoner escaping!”

Marianne jabbed her thumb toward the cell she shared with Dawn. “Actually, I was just on my way back?”

He settled down and peered up at her sympathetically. “Aw… so the date didn’t work out?”

Marianne stumbled over the word “date,” but at the reminder, her annoyance resurged and carried her through. “Apparently I’m ‘out of my mind’ and ‘don’t know my real feelings.’” She finger-quoted viciously, even though Bog hadn’t said those exact words. “Is he always such a…?”

“Charmer?”

“Absolute delight?” Asked another goblin, a lumpy one with clever eyes. “He’s been on top of his game today, that’s for sure.”

Marianne glanced between their smiling faces, then sighed. “Can you just let me back in my cell?”

They made to do so, but then a gravelly goblin voice carried down the stairs and everything froze.

“Army at the gates! We’re being invaded!”

A flood of goblins began scrambling up the stairs toward her but, before she could be caught in the press and driven up by them, Marianne turned and took flight for the entry hall.

Her sword remained behind on the floor of the cell, still forgotten.

.

Bog stood in the wide front doorway with his staff in hand and his goblins massing behind him, ready to meet the approaching force. Sort of. Really, he was filled with dread for his people and bitter resignation to killing a lot of Marianne’s subjects, but those weren’t helpful emotions, so he packed them down deep and focused on the outrage, the mounting insults.

Wanting to claim the bottleneck for when the fighting started, he flew forward to confront them midway across the bridge. “Halt and state your business bringing an army into my lands!”

At the lead was a vaguely-familiar looking blonde fairy astride a fat squirrel. When Bog landed and planted his staff on the stone, the beast stopped short and the fairy lurched in his saddle. Now he sat up, puffed up with his own importance.

“It seemed only fair, Bog King,” the fairy intoned grandly, “to answer an armed force with an armed force.”

Bog bared his teeth. “Who are _you?_ Where is King Dagda?”

“Never you mind where the king is. In his wisdom, he has sent me, Sir Roland, to retrieve his beloved daughters.”

“Has he now?” Bog allowed himself a nasty smirk. An army was only as strong as its leader, and a leader who stayed behind was not strong. When this did come to blows, his goblins would have an advantage there. Not that this glittery little knight seemed to understand that.

“I have…” He whipped the shimmering pink bottle from his belt pouch with a flourish and jiggled it smugly in the air. “…obtained your love potion and delivered it prior to moondown - as requested. Now, the princesses - princesseses, -sesses…”

“Bring them,” Bog snapped over his shoulder before the fool had stopped speaking - and before the wrenching feeling in his gut could distract him. He turned back to face the enemy, but there was a rush of wind and impact beside him.

“Wow, now that was fas-“

“Roland,” Marianne cut the other fairy off. “What are you doing here? What is this?”

She gestured sharply at the army, and Bog’s heart kicked inside his chest as he took in the sight of her, standing fiercely at his side. He tore his eyes off her quickly, but the damage was already done. He’d seen it. She would haunt him long after she had left him, a spectral queen.

“Never fear, my little buttercup, I’ve come to your rescue-“

“I don’t need to be rescued! And _don’t_ call me that! I’m not your _anything!_ ”

Oh. _Oh._

_The last fiancee._

Bog’s eyes flicked between her and the blonde fairy. “Him? _Really?_ ”

Marianne cringed, then glared at him instead for a beat, her cheeks pink. “Drop it.”

“Oh, that’s right,” the last fiancee said loudly, an edge of mean amusement in his pompous tone. “You have a new beau now, don’t you, Marianne? How’s that been? Have you two been-“ He made a little retching sound, but didn’t let it stop him. “- _enjoying_ each other?”

Marianne sputtered, but Bog turned on him with an incensed buzz, pointing imperiously with his staff. “Don’t you dare impugn the princess’s honor or _mine_ \- I’ll be more than glad to settle the issue with you, personally, right now.”

The fairy held up his armored hands as if to soothe away the insult, but his eyes twinkled with wicked cunning. “Easy, now. I don’t mean you any offense or anything. I’m just curious! We all are!”

He held out his arms and twisted in the saddle to look at his army - and a murmur of agreement obediently went up. Notably, an unarmored elf in the front - _the_ elf, the thief who had caused all of this - only rolled his eyes. Roland turned back, grinning.

“I mean, from what we all witnessed back at the festival, you must’ve really had your hands full after Marianne escaped. But, uh, she seems… pretty calm now - so clearly she’s enjoyed… _some_ part of her captivity.”

“You disgusting creep,” Marianne snapped.

Bog was also repelled by the insinuation, but he hesitated. Something about this had his neck prickling and his eyes flitting to the sides. It felt like a trap. Maybe the fool _wanted_ him to attack. Maybe he was trying to goad him to violence - because if Bog struck the first physical blow, a battle would be inevitable. And Roland could still report back to his king that he hadn’t started it.

“Not to worry, though,” Roland went on, his metal-clad fingers tinkling against the bottle of potion, “I’m happy to take her off your hands.”

Marianne made another scathing comment, but Bog just stared at the potion bottle. Then he looked at Marianne.

It was the one solution Plum had been able to offer him - dust her again and don’t stand in front this time. Maybe that was the right thing to do. Maybe sending her into the arms of another man was the only way to save her from a life of pining after a monster she could never truly love. And wasn’t it the worst kind of selfishness to deny her her life, her home, just so she would stay near him?

But Bog only hesitated for the space of three piercing heartbeats. Just long enough to take in how Marianne curled her lip at this man - a level of personal loathing he hadn’t seen on her face before. Just long enough to see her grasp for a sword that wasn’t there, and to see fear start to blossom in her eyes.

“That wasn’t the deal.” He fixed a hard look on the knight, whose eyebrows were creeping up his stupid pouty face. “The deal was, you return the potion, I return Princess Dawn and abstain from marrying Marianne.”

“Uhh… say what now?”

“She’s not my prisoner. She came to the Dark Forest of her own volition, and she’ll leave the same way. The use of that potion-” He stabbed a clawed finger at it. “-is forbidden in my kingdom.”

Bog didn’t see the look Marianne cast him, soft and startled. Relieved. _More._ He only watched as Roland’s face twisted.

“That’s awful convenient for you. You know what _I_ think-” He raised his voice, appealing to his army again. “I think the Bog King here has _fallen_ for our crown princess!”

There was a chorus of ‘ooooh’s that made Bog want to shrink and hide under a rock. Their eyes crawled over him like ants on bad fruit, the full length of his strange-even-for-a-goblin body. He could _feel_ their speculation, their revulsion at the mere thought of his clawed hands touching their princess.

But Bog did not flinch. Instead, he stood up straighter, hot-faced and indignant against the storm of judgement. He didn’t see Marianne’s hand twitch like she wanted to reach out for his before she stopped herself.

“Oh, would you all just knock it off?” shouted the elf, stepping out of his place next to the squirrel and turning to glare at his own people. “Who cares! People fall in love with other people and they can’t help it! Just like _I_ couldn’t help falling in love with Dawn! It’s crazy and impossible and you just can’t stop it! And you know what makes that totally miserable helpless feeling a whole lot worse? A bunch of _jerks_ rubbing it in your face that it’s crazy and impossible!”

There was a stiff, awkward silence as everyone stared at the elf, who was breathing hard and trembling slightly from his outburst. Bog decided, with some reluctance, that he might not imprison him for trespassing and stealing after all. Maybe.

“Sunny?”

The silence got stiffer, and the elf went totally rigid. Then, slowly, hanging his head, he turned to look at Dawn as she emerged from amongst the goblins. She clutched the hilt of Marianne’s sword to her chest like a talisman.

“You… love me?”

The elf visibly struggled - shrug, blush, squirm. Then he held out his empty hands. “I- yes. Dawn, I really do. Love you.”

Her wings twitched behind her, but she hesitated, undecided.

_Fairies and their fairy dramas._

“While this is all… _so_ interesting,” Roland said as he dismounted and strode forward, brushing Sunny out of the way as he passed, “don’t we have a transaction to complete?”

“So we do.” Bog held out his hand for the potion. He expected a trick, and his other hand was fisted hard around his staff as the knight swaggered closer.

But Roland just placed the bottle in his hand and smiled.

Bog’s fingers closed around the potion and he felt, for the first time since Plum confessed to making it, like this nightmare might be nearing its end. Then he turned to where the princess still stood hesitating, clutching Marianne’s sword and looking confused, and hurt and overwhelmed-

And that was when Roland struck.

Bog didn’t see it, but he instantly knew what happened. He heard the knight take in a big breath, heard him puff it out suddenly and the tinkling magical sound of the potion scattering out of his gauntlet and into Marianne’s face. He knew - but he still turned to stare at her in horror as she fell a step back, clutching her eyes where the pink dust was vanishing.

A plaintive, despairing “ _No!_ ” slipped out of him.

There was an instant to decide. Did he step into her path and assure she saw him first? Simply negate the second dose of potion? Did he just allow her to look at someone else - even her hated former fiancee - in the hopes of setting her free of him?

Or, most foolish of all, did he dare hope that the potion would fail?

If asked, he would have said it all happened too fast, that he just didn’t make a decision and that was why he stood so still, holding his breath. But that would have been a lie.

Marianne opened her eyes and looked straight at the grinning knight. Bog watched tension shudder through her, her every limb gone tight and her eyes flashing with emotion - and his heart plummeted.

The potion was working.

“Hey, Buttercup,” Roland said, thick with self-satisfaction. “Wakey-wakey. Your dreams… are about to come true.”

Bog tensed up to attack, but the growl died in his throat as Marianne shoved in front of him, grabbed her sword out of Dawn’s hands, and _launched_ herself at Roland.

“Woah!” He leapt back, barely evading her swing. “Uh, darlin’-“ He lurched to the side to avoid a stab. “-now, honey-lamb-“

“Draw your sword, you coward,” Marianne snarled.

“A gentleman never bears arms against a lady- my _hair!_ ”

A few tufts of wispy gold floated down to the stone bridge. The knight clutched at his head with an expression of such horror, she may as well have taken an ear.

Bog watched him scramble to avoid her - and set the butt of his staff back on the ground. The potion was working. So let the fool have what he’d so badly wanted. 

And if the shattered heart inside Bog’s chest left him too fragile to even think of moving, so what? That didn’t really matter.

What mattered was that she was so beautiful in her movements, deadly in her grace. He hadn’t been able to really appreciate it when she had attacked him - having been fighting for his life at the time - but now he could focus fully on her speed, her cleverness. The knight took to the air and she followed, chasing her quarry around the bridge in a loop so tight and fast she passed in a purple blur, then changed direction suddenly and kicked him back to the ground.

Roland sprawled, then scuttled backward on his rear to escape as she landed and stalked in. She was moving toward Bog, now, her sword hanging ready in one hand, her eyes hot in the new rays of the rising sun and fixed unerringly on her prey, who had backed up all the way into an obstacle – Bog’s staff, planted suddenly like a tree behind him.

“You show him, Tough Girl,” Bog growled, quiet enough that she shouldn’t have heard him. He could feel Roland’s quaking through the metal in his hand.

But Marianne did hear him. Her eyes flashed up to his. And then she started to sing.

“ _Love… I get so lost sometimes…_ ”

Bog’s chest was already full of agony and pride at the sight of her. Love drenched him, sticky and binding as honey, smothering him where he stood, gumming up his brain. He had always known she couldn’t really love him, so it shouldn’t hurt to witness the final damning truth of it now, to hear her singing so gently for this… fairy scum.

“ _Days pass, and this emptiness fills my heart…_ ”

But it did hurt. It hurt like he’d been mortally wounded and was still standing straight and tall, still pretending he’d survive the death blow. He could do this much for her – for his own pride; he could look calm while she moved on.

“ _But, whichever way I go, I come back to the place you are…_ ”

Marianne was still watching him, which might have seemed odd if Bog had been thinking clearly – but he wasn’t. He was seeing the way she stepped between the knight’s legs and his mind was seizing on it –

-and then she planted her boot on his breastplate and pressed him down like a frond of moss.

“ _All my instincts, they return…_ ”

Bog looked up, slow and confused.

“ _The grand facade, so soon will burn._ ”

Marianne watched him, sword in hand, closing in. Unnoticed by either of them, Roland whimpered as her boot smooshed into the side of his face.

“ _Without a noise - and without my pride…_ ”

She slid a hand up Bog’s chest, over his shoulder, around the back of his neck, her fingers probing deliciously along the creases between his collar scales.

“ _I reach out from the inside._ ”

And then she kissed him.

Bog didn’t think about the potion – not even when it slid from his tingling fingers and smashed on the ground. He didn’t even hear the clang of his staff falling. All he knew was the slide of his arms closing around her waist, her wings stroking light over his plated forearms, the feel of her soft warmth snug against his chest.

And her mouth. Her lips were tender and electric against his. She tasted like honeysuckle. She bit him with her flat, sharp teeth and he uttered a startled sound.

Then she withdrew and eyed him purposefully, opened her mouth to speak.

“Wow,” said Dawn from where she stood watching not an arm’s length away. “You two are…”

Bog and Marianne turned their heads in the same quick snap.

“…kind of cute together?”

Bog became aware of all of his goblins behind him, gathered to go to battle against all the Light Field folk that were also gathered just right over there - all of them silently watching him get his brains kissed out by…

He turned slowly back to Marianne - who wore a look of alarm to match his own - and in the same instant they separated. Bog cleared his throat and snatched up his staff from where he’d dropped it.

_Oh no…_


	7. Chapter 7

Marianne did a nervous little bounce and poked Roland’s breastplate with the point of her sword. He wheezed pitifully, but no one was really listening to him at all anymore.

Oh, this was embarrassing. This was a shame Marianne had never known. What had she been _thinking_? She hadn’t been thinking. She just let _go_ and allowed herself to do exactly what the potion had been demanding she do all night. Maybe it was that second dose - because she felt different this time than she had at the Elf Festival. She’d had the same sort of mind-numbing anger (although that was totally normal for her in dealing with Roland) but then she’d taken him down, and Bog had urged her on so softly and-

And she had _come apart._

With his eyes on her, she had suddenly realized how unimportant Roland really was, regardless of his scheming. Bog’s eyes were the softest part of him, and whatever words he’d been saying, his eyes had been pleading - and Marianne had answered that call.

But… apparently… not the right way. He had looked so shocked immediately after, so disbelieving. And no wonder. He’d told her he didn’t want to kiss her, and she just bulled through and did it anyway. He’d been too surprised to even try to stop her.

It had been foolish to kiss him like that in front of all these people… but it wasn’t really _entirely_ her fault, was it? She’d been love-dusted. Twice! She could make amends for embarrassing him (she hoped) but right now she had to get control of this situation - and of herself. She couldn’t just… let the potion win.

“You, uh, should probably arrest him,” she said, glancing up at Bog and blushing. “For using a love potion.”

“Arrest him.” Bog picked out two goblins seemingly at random with a stab of his clawed finger. He sounded decisive, commanding - but he was clearly uncomfortable. He spoke _so_ fast.

Fighting a wave of guilt, Marianne stepped off Roland so he could be dragged away. She didn’t pause to watch. Instead, she drew her shoulders back to a regal posture and turned to face the army Roland had finally convinced her father to give him. They - her own people - watched her warily. Belatedly, Marianne sheathed her sword.

“There won’t be any battles today,” she said. “Captain Roland will face justice for his breach of Dark Forest law - for using a love potion on _me_. The rest of you will escort Princess Dawn home peacefully.”

“Wait… you aren’t… coming with us?” Marianne fixed her attention entirely on the speaker and, in the rush of anger she felt at the reminder that he was here, ignored his question completely.

“Sunny,” she snapped, and he flinched but stepped forward. “What you did was so stupid and dangerous and wrong I have trouble thinking about it without wanting to choke you. At best, you could have enslaved my sister. At worst, you could have started a war.”

He cringed before her, radiating remorse. “I know, Princess. I didn’t really realize what the potion would do. I’m- I’m so sorry that… _you_ were-”

“Shut up.”

He did, and fixed his eyes on the ground in front of his feet, twisting his hands together before him.

“You were warned, the same as everyone, that the potion was dangerous. I’ll be recommending a severe punishment to my father, in addition to whatever the Bog King deems appropriate-“

“Marianne,” Dawn broke in, grasping her elbow. She spoke in a lowered voice, not meant to carry. “Sunny didn’t mean any harm. He just made a mistake.”

“Using the wrong fork at dinner is a mistake,” Marianne returned sharply. “Telling a bad joke is a mistake. Coming all the way out here to sneak into the prison of a _neighboring kingdom_ and get an illicit potion so he could force you to love him is a _project_ that took time and thought.”

“But… He loves me…”

“That’s not an excuse, Dawn,” Marianne hissed, grabbing her sister by both shoulders. “Your whole attitude about this potion has been flippant and childish! It wasn’t ‘love at first sight’ with happy songs and boutonnieres and cutesy nicknames! I threw myself at a _complete stranger_ \- who had _kidnapped_ you! This could have gone _very wrong_ for me!”

“It seems to have turned out pretty well,” Dawn tried, casting Bog a little smile.

“No,” Marianne stressed, stamping down the urge to follow her glance. “It hasn’t. I’m still cursed, Dawn. Double-cursed! I just made a complete fool out of myself, and publicly embarrassed a king because I can’t control myself.”

“A bit, I s’pose.”

Marianne spun to stare at Bog, who stood closer than he had been a moment before. His posture was different. His shoulder scales were tightly flattened together and he was hunched forward in a way that made him look smaller and less prickly. His eyes were especially round, and they flitted to her and away as he spoke. He looked… nervous.

“It was a… pleasant kind of embarrassed, though. If that makes sense? I mean-“ He shook his head and cleared his throat, then frowned at her with a more guarded expression. “I need to tell you. About the potion…”

Marianne had a feeling he was about to tell her something he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted her to know. He was speaking very quietly.

“You’re not… double-cursed, as you say. That second dose should have canceled out the first when you laid eyes on that… Roland. You should have fallen in love with him, same as… with me… before. Unless, ahem, unless you’d already… had the antidote.”

“I haven’t had anything.”

“It’s not—that kind of antidote.”

“Then what is it?”

His eyes flashed, panicky. “It’s, er… that is to say…”

“It’s real love!” cried Griselda from directly behind him.

Bog gave a startled flitter, then glowered as she side-stepped around him, arms flung wide and mouth open to grin and sing simultaneously. Bog frantically waved her back, though, and with a grumble, she deflated. He knuckled his brow, then looked back at Marianne with a sort of weary determination.

“But no one else has to know, if- if that’s what you’d prefer,” he said, softly. “If you want your people to believe you only… did what you did because of the potion, I won’t say otherwise. You can return to your life as it was.”

Marianne’s heart gave a painful lurch. Her head was spinning as she tried to make sense of this new information. She _wasn’t_ under the effects of the potion? And she _still kissed him in front of all these people? What was wrong with her?_

But that was fairly obvious. Real love. That was what this was. The flutter in her stomach when she looked at him. The magnetic pull she felt toward him, the dizzy wishes to be back in his arms that nearly drowned out the rest of her thoughts. On a level, she had already known it was real. Hadn’t she told him so after he bandaged her hands? Or had that happened later - after he refused her?

 _Oh, I’ll have you. Reclaim your_ sanity _and then ask me again._

That was it, Marianne knew, deep in her bones. That was the moment when it had changed. Not because of all of his good qualities, his kindness and honesty and willingness to fight her to a standstill - but because he had denied her when she wasn’t entirely herself. He had wanted _her_ , not a potion-driven version of her.

And now he stood here peering down at her, an anxious knot in his brow. Was he suggesting that she just ignore her feelings? And… why? So that they could both return to their kingdoms and save the shreds of their dignity? Had he changed his mind about wanting her?

Marianne felt sick. To be so close, and then only have love ripped away again - it felt nightmarish. She swallowed, tipped up her chin.

“Is that what you want?”

He blinked at her and jerked his head back as if she’d insulted him. “I’m not the one who went through an _ordeal_.”

“Oh, that is so sweet,” Dawn gasped. “He doesn’t think you’re an ordeal!”

Marianne shot her a glare and gently shoved her as far away as she could reach – and when her arm would reach no farther, she used her foot instead. Then she frowned back up at Bog.

“Do you…? I mean, not that I need you to say anything! Because that would be needy, which I am _not_ , but I kind of…” She squinted and waved her hands before her chest. “You know?”

“I…” Bog’s face scrunched up. “…I’m not sure I do. Know, I mean.”

Marianne heaved a sigh and rubbed the back of her neck, hanging her head. “Look. I’ve made it pretty… humiliatingly obvious how I feel about you. I mean, if the cure for the potion is real love, and I’m cured, then it’s kind of an inarguable, proven fact that… I really love you.”

She peeked up at him through her bangs. His eyes were dazzling, so wide and blue and vulnerable. His brow was a disbelieving arch of scales.

“I was so sure you’d wake up and hate me,” he said faintly. “Are you sure you don’t?”

“Pretty sure.”

“And… you won’t? You won’t just… suddenly realize later that I’m…?”

He trailed off, searching her face for any hint of uncertainty. Marianne frowned up at him and crossed her arms over her chest.

“That you’re what?”

“Hideous,” he blurted softly, then hastened on. “Evil. A miserable tyrant with… really nothing to offer that should entice a fairy princess.”

“You aren’t hideous. Or evil.” It proved too much an effort to stop from rolling her eyes. “And you’re probably not really a tyrant either. Your people seem to like you.”

Bog peered down at her, his cheeks a little pink.

“…and besides,” she grimaced, “I’m not, like, a _normal_ fairy princess, anyway, so-”

“That’s what I like.”

His face briefly held a warm, lopsided smile, and Marianne felt her heart stumble in its beats. Then he cleared his throat and frowned at the ground between them.

“I mean- ah! You- you really _ought_ to hate me. I took your sister hostage.”

Marianne narrowed her eyes. “Which you won’t be doing again.”

“No! But, I mean…” Bog ducked his head once more and chittered his claws against the plates over his belly. “I probably ought to apologize for that…”

“Probably.”

“I’m sorry, Marianne.”

There was a beat of silence between them, Marianne lost in his earnest stare. Then a voice hissed from behind Bog.

“Stop talking her out of it and just tell her. Sing the one with-”

“Mom, _no!_ ” he managed through his teeth.

Reminded of their audience, Marianne glanced around at the watching goblins and fairies and elves, many of whom wore fascinated, speculative expressions. Dawn shot her an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

A blush crept up her face and burned deep. It was probably permanent. She would be red forever. That seemed like where all this was headed.

“You- ahem… _You got me tripping, stumbling…_ ”

She snapped back around to find Bog clutching his staff before him and mumbling a quiet song. His cheeks were pink, too. His eyes met hers, flicked away, returned.

“ _…flipping, fumbling…_ ”

Marianne stepped closer, and his eyes fixed on hers - and what hid there made it impossible not to reach out and gently push the amber ornament to one side. Bog let her reposition it, breathing out the song like it was a thread being inexorably spooled out from inside him.

“… _clumsy ‘cause I’m falling in love…_ ”

“ _In-in love-love._ ”

“ _So in love with you…_ ”

They leaned together, their lips barely stilled from the song when they met. This time, the kiss was slow and certain, and both of them felt an old fear easing, making way for something new, something sweet.

There was cheering that they did not hear - Dawn and Griselda and several goblins were especially delighted, and the troops from the Light Fields looked on in some consternation, unaware as they still were that the crown princess was in fact of sound mind. Sunny rubbed the back of his neck, wondering how bad he should really feel about all this when they looked so… happy together. King Dagda, arriving late on his litter just in time to witness his daughter kissing the Bog King and singing along to a _highly_ untraditional song, had no sooner stood up than he had to sit right back down.

It would take some explaining later, bolstered by Plum’s expertise and numerous witness accounts as to who hit whom with a love potion and who harbored designs on the throne and who did not, but order would be restored in the end. Roland would stay in the Bog King’s dungeon. Sunny would do a lot of community service - during which Dawn would hang around more and more despite her sister’s lectures.

And Marianne of course would marry the Bog King and rule her kingdom alongside his in peace and prosperity for the rest of their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fergie - "Clumsy" 
> 
> go on judge me >:)
> 
> Really though, thank you for reading and reviewing and all those kudos!


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